Intelligence Sharing

Carrie returned to the ops room during the mid afternoon, cursing under her breath at what a power crazed despot Bakri was as he had not allowed her to leave the office when she wanted to, expecting her to carry on working at her desk like everybody else. She glanced around the room, seeing only Virgil and Max, her stomach knotted.

"Where is he?" she asked keeping her voice calm as the rush of misgiving that she did not understand hit her.

Virgil shrugged. "….Said something about wanting some fresh air."

As if on cue, the door banged and Quinn entered, four cups of coffee balanced in the cardboard tray in his hand. "Can't beat the proper stuff," he muttered as he handed them around.

"Thanks." Carrie let her hand linger on his as she took a cup from him. "So are we all ready for a bout of intelligence sharing?" she asked.

She sat on a chair behind Max, who half turned, keeping one eye on the screen in front of him, Virgil sat beside him and Quinn perched on the edge of the desk behind, purposely keeping himself on the periphery.

"So, you know Samir Bakri, Quinn?" Carrie asked.

He nodded as he took a sip from his drink. "Yeah."

Carrie raised her eyebrows. "Would you care to be a little more explicit on that?"

"Not really. It's classified."

"Oh come on, Quinn," Carrie scoffed. "Less of the bullshit. We're all friends here!"

Quinn sighed and bit his lip. "Mogadishu, Somalia, job went to hell, couldn't get to the targets as planned. Ended up high-tailing it out leaving two good men dead." His voice was stony and distant, the memory obviously still hurt.

"And Bakri?"

"Turned out we were working on his Intel. It was fucked." He shook his head slowly. "He turned up at retrieval, so we brought him back. Listened to his conceited bullshit all the way home. In the end we all wished we'd just left him there to rot."

"When was this?"

Quinn shrugged. "About three years ago, not long before Brody."

"What the fuck was he doing in Mogadishu?"

"That information was never shared with me," Quinn replied. "I'm just a soldier after all."

Carrie nodded. "I knew him in Baghdad about ten years ago. He was IT Security there."

"Did you fuck him?"

"Quinn!" Carrie snorted as Max and Virgil shuffled uncomfortably.

"What? We're all friends here," Quinn responded wryly.

Carrie sent him her most withering look. She hated him when he acted this way but she also remembered the night before and her realisation that this barbed wired offence was the wall that protected him. The thought did not, however, stop her from rising to the challenge.

"Yes we did. Many times and very hot it was too!" she responded, ignoring the embarrassed flush that coloured Max's cheeks and the way Virgil flinched and looked away, she focused her blazing eyes exclusively at Quinn, who simply absorbed their heat and sipped at his coffee innocently.

Carrie continued. "We worked very closely together and he appeared to be very good. But something was off. I couldn't put my finger on it; it was more instinct than facts." She shot Quinn another challenging stare, but he remained silent, suddenly not making eye contact with her and she wondered if he was regretting his previous dig.

"I started to watch him closely, little things didn't add up. He was either increasingly sloppy or there was something else going on. I built up a dossier but when I almost got enough the operation went to hell, I got out of there and I believed that Bakri didn't make it. It was a fucking shock to see him alive and kicking at Langley."

"Seems to be a pattern emerging," Virgil said. "He plays it as long as he can and then blows up the game, re-emerging elsewhere to start all over again."

"Could just be a coincidence," Quinn said. "We only have two instances."

"That we know of!" Carrie bit back.

"Two swallows don't make a summer!" Quinn seemed determined to antagonise her. Carrie was beginning to wonder if the previous night had ever happened at all, which she reasoned was probably what he wanted her to think; another block in that fucking defensive wall of his. Concentrating her fluttering mind back on to the issue, she continued, "Which is why we set up this operation; to get some evidence."

"Operation?" Quinn repeated arching his eyebrows.

Carrie nodded. "I've been working in Bakri's Cyber Terrorism Unit at Langley."

Quinn snorted. "Sounds exciting," He said voice dripping with irony.

"Not really," Carrie snapped back even as she told herself that she shouldn't. "It's messing with my head but it's given me, well Max really, access to what we need."

She stared at Quinn challengingly and he returned the glare with no less intensity.

"He's certainly doing something weird," Virgil said, deciding the tension in the room was just too volatile and trying to focus two people who were obviously working from a different script to his, back to the, in his opinion, more important matter in question. "Tell them what you got, Max."

Max looked uncomfortable as the focus of two fiery sets of eyes switched to him. "He is accessing highly classified stuff that seems to be disappearing."

"What better place to be effective as a double agent than in the IT police?" Virgil said. "He has access to it all."

"Have operations been compromised?" Quinn asked. "Have our people died?"

Carrie nodded solemnly. "We believe so."

"Then you have to take this to Saul!" Quinn's outlook had changed dramatically over the course of the conversation, once he was aware that lives may have been lost.

Carrie hesitated and exchanged a knowing look with Virgil who stood up. "I think the need for air is catching. C'mon Max let's take a walk."

"But I..."

"C'mon Max!"

Quinn bit his lip as he watched the two men leave. "Is that for my benefit?" he asked sardonically as the door banged shut.

"No, not for you, for Max's really," Carrie's tone was dismissive but it became more somber. "There's something that I haven't told you, something that Max doesn't know either, only Virgil knows." She hesitated. "I haven't told you before because I thought you would go ballistic."

His eyes narrowed. "Try me," he said.

Carrie took a deep breath. "In Islamabad, I told you I had a chance at Haqqani but Kahn stopped me. I saw something there..." She licked her lips, wondering how best to phrase what she had to say.

"Go on," he prompted, leaning towards her expectantly.

"Dar Adal was with Haqqani." Sometimes there was no alternative but to say the words and deal with their consequences.

Quinn stiffened. "What?"

"They made a deal, Quinn. They sold us out and every one of our friends who died. They fucking spat on their graves."

She watched him minutely, saw the disbelief flash across his face, to be quickly followed by cynical acceptance. He stood up in a rush of controlled energy, ran his hand through his hair, gulping in air and shaking his head, wavering slightly as if he was unsure of his next move. She remembered his terrifying stillness of the night before, wondered if she had done the right thing in telling him now but, fuck it, there was never a good time to destroy the foundations of someone's faith completely, even if those foundations had been crumbling for some time. She needed him functioning at his best now, more than ever and he needed to know the truth.

He did not descend into fury, either violent or motionless. He held her stare for awhile before muttering bleakly. "I am glad I killed the bastard." He flexed his hands, raising one to his mouth and scrubbing at his lips edgily.

She stood up then, moved towards him and hugged him, feeling both the electric energy of his anger sparking through him and the firm control with which he held it at bay. It was not a passionate hug but one of friendship, of adversity shared and confronted together, of human closeness and each felt strengthened by the other. The antagonism of just a few minutes before melting away like morning frost in the warm spring sunshine.

Finally she stepped backwards. "There's more. Saul knew and while I don't believe he planned it, he certainly by his actions has condoned it." Her voice was frozen in bitterness.

Tenderly, feeling her pain, Quinn reached out to her and pulled her back into his arms as if to shield her from everything in the world that sort to do her harm. He buried his face deep into her hair. "I am so sorry, Carrie," he mumbled, gently rubbing her back. She pushed herself into his body, feeling his soft strength and potency surround her and wishing she could remain in this safe place forever.

The door opened with a bang and Virgil cleared his throat uncomfortably loudly. "Not interrupting anything are we?"

Carrie and Quinn immediately uncoupled, stepping away from each other with flustered haste which only served to make their previous closeness even more obvious. Max threw a knowing glance toward his companion but Virgil ignored it, focussing his attention on an imaginary stain on his jeans and rubbing at it distractedly as he bumbled towards the kitchen area.

"So what is the plan?" Quinn asked.

"We need more intel," Carrie said. "We need to keep watching. And you and I need to decide who is the best person in the Agency to take this to. What about the new Head of Black Ops?"

Virgil shivered. "Suneeta Chankria? She's a fire-breathing dragon, so I hear," he said.

Quinn snorted. "I have a meeting with her tomorrow. I'll see what she's like. She's from outside, no black ops experience at all, so she may be clean, or she may not. Christ knows."

"My advice is you should wear your fireproof underwear if you're seeing her, Peter," Virgil added. "She toasts agents for fun - your black ops boys do not stand a chance with her!"